Under this initiative, food waste will still be collected weekly but other garbage, including even animal waste, could be left to rot for ages.

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The new scheme was introduced in North Wales on MondayCredit: Alamy

The council tries to justify this extreme policy by claiming it will save £390,000 a year and boost recycling rates. Yet many local people are appalled.

They point out that the pilot of the monthly scheme allowed the rubbish to fester, breeding maggots, causing foul smells and attracting rats.

One resident complained that “the whole area is plagued with flies in summer”.

The fiasco represents a triumph of green ideology and municipal bullying over traditional British common sense.

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People complained that rubbish left laying around caused flies and maggots to infest the areaCredit: Alamy

Certain desperate residents have even resorted to burning some of their rubbish to prevent bins overflowing.

That reality serves as a graphic indicator of the grotesque mess created by Conwy’s posturing politicians and blinkered bureaucrats.

We are meant to be living in an advanced, 21st Century nation, not some medieval backwater without proper sanitation or a civic infrastructure.

For all the justifiable outrage over Conwy, it is certain that other local authorities will copy this flawed experiment. Despite all the putrid squalor, monthly collections will probably soon become the norm.

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The UK's rat population has reached 200million as rubbish continues to pile upCredit: Getty - Contributor

As our basic service disappears, we will be told that we have to accept this because of the need to protect the environment. But that is a pathetic argument.

The absurdity of this fashionable obsession with waste disposal is that it actually inflicts terrible damage on the environment.

Thanks to the decline in proper bin collections, our green and pleasant land is now being covered with household litter and debris.

There has been a rapid growth in the nasty phenomenon of fly-tipping, two thirds of which involves household waste.

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With reduction of weekly bin collections councils are now spending more on the consequencesCredit: Alamy

In 2016/17 councils had to deal with no fewer than one million incidents, an increase of seven per cent on the previous year and a rise of 40 per cent since 2013.

In Conwy alone, unsurprisingly, recorded incidents of fly-tipping rose by 25 per cent over the past year.

While town halls trumpet the savings they make from the end of weekly bin collections, they are now forced to spend a fortune on the consequences.

In 2016/17, the costs of clearing fly-tips amounted to £58million. Just as worrying is the spread of dangerous pests in the grubby Britain neglected by our municipalities.

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Residents of Bury, Lancashire, forked out for a private bin removal company because of monthly bin collectionsCredit: Alamy

In 2014, just as the waste mania was beginning to grip officialdom, the rat population stood at 160million. Today, that figure is estimated to have reached a terrifying 200million.

It is no surprise, then, to find that call-outs to pest control companies have gone up by 19 per cent over the same period. The town halls are patently failing in their duties. Local taxpayers are not receiving the service they pay for.

Indeed, in the Lancs town of Bury, locals were compelled to fork out for a private firm to remove their waste after their bin collection was slashed to once a month.

Yet instead of facing up to their real responsibilities, the commissars of the town halls like to extend their control.

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The council claims it will save £390,000 a year with the new scheduleCredit: Alamy

The green agenda has given them an excuse to seize more power, cloaking their authoritarian antics in the language of ecological concern.

It is ridiculous that as straightforward a task as emptying the bins has been turned into a huge bureaucratic obstacle course, with citizens required to comply with the ever more complex, draconian demands of officialdom.

In some boroughs, residents have no fewer than five different colour-coded containers, which not only clutter up the streets but make life extremely difficult for those living in small properties.

All this is backed up by a regime of heavy financial penalties for minor infringements, such as leaving out a bin too long or failing to put down a lid properly.

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Last September, Stoke-on-Trent council caused an outcry by warning some residents they could face fines of up to £2,500 for any breaches of its code.

In an echo of the old Soviet bloc, other councils have used hidden cameras to check on compliance by householders, while no fewer than 166 authorities have installed surveillance cameras on their bin lorries to record behaviour.

The regime of neglect and punishment is building an army of offenders out of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Britons deserve better than this rubbish system.

London's Burning star John Alford hijacks London bin lorry and resits when officers try to restrain him